I have a box of old magazines and I can’t bring myself to throw them out. I already read them once and the information in them is for the most part, dated or obsolete. But have you noticed that it is getting harder and harder to find magazines for sale in local stores? With all the big bookstores gone, all that is left are some grocery stores and maybe MalMart. I like looking at magazines and I like holding real books in my hands. I sure hope someone finds a way to keep magazines and books available for purchase locally and not have to rely on the internet for it all.
Category Archives: Business
Haircut
Got a haircut today. I just needed to get out of the office for a little while and clear my head. Most days I go out for lunch, but today lunch was not long enough to refortify. I called the receptionist and told her that “I was going to be out for another hour and to forward any calls to my cell phone. It rang a couple of times, but I let it go to voice mail. I just needed that hour undisturbed and doing something for myself for a change. And I look better for it.
Paper Delivery
The days of having a daily newspaper delivered to your door are numbered. I remember as a kid we had three newspapers delivered to our house every day. In the morning we had the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal delivered to a metal box on top of a metal fence post at the end of the driveway. Every morning my dad would call to our dog, Lucky, and walk down to the paper box and get the newspaper. He read them both over his morning cup of coffee and then the breakfast that my mom cooked for him.
In the afternoons we would get the Evening Star delivered to the house. The Star brought us up to date on all the news that had happened that day, missed by the early edition of the Washington Post, which had to go to press at midnight. The Star also carried a lot more of the local news. The Lions Club meetings, the high school football games and high school events, and speeches by the Mayor or other dignitaries.
I do miss those days. The cable news and the internet give us the daily and breaking news, but it just is not the same as reading the newspaper in the easy chair with a hot cup of coffee and Lucky sitting beside you.
When the phone rings at 1:00 am
Reply
It was 1:00 am when my phone rang and I knew as I reached for it to answer that it would not be good news. When the phone rings in the middle of the night it is never good news.
A woman was calling, crying, to tell me that her son had just committed suicide by taking a massive prescription drug overdose. Both the mother and her son work for us in the warehouse, third shift. So she was calling to let me know that they would not be at work this morning. The bad news was a shock – I had no idea her son was so depressed that he would ever do anything like that and now I feel guilty for not paying more attention to him. How could I not see that something was so terribly wrong in his life that he would do this? But then, it came as a complete surprise to his mother, too.
Debit Card Holds
A lot of the gas stations are putting a hold on your bank account for a high dollar amount when you use a debit card to pay for gas. Most of the time it is for a set amount, such as $75, which is much more money than what most people actually spend at the pump.I believe the average purchase at the pump is now averaging about $40-$45. The hold remains on your account making the excess amount unavailable to you until the hold is released – sometimes several days later.
Its not a scam but its a problem for a lot of people who keep low balances. The hold can be left on the account for several days, depending on which day of the week you buy the gas. If you buy gas on a Friday afternoon, it can be Tuesday midnight before the bank processes the batch orders to make your funds available.
The way to avoid this is to pay cash for gas or to put it on a credit card if you are good about paying the whole balance each month and not letting the charges carry over with interest added to it.
A lot of gas stations have ATMS inside their stores with no fees for using their ATM, like the Thorntons chain in Nashville. You can withdraw the cash and pay for your gas with no problems about fees or holds on your account. I pay cash whenever possible.